This post isn’t going to be about PR for the most part, so if that’s your interest, you can stop reading.

OK, not so fast.

What’s got me going today is the topic of jobs. Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain, and the accusations flying around about his role in destroying (and creating) jobs with the blunt instrument of private capital, is everywhere in the news. Data-driven analyses of job trends are much harder to find than criticism of Romney, although this piece by Holman Jenkins in the Wall Street Journal is on point.

Anyone who’s been in the work world for more than a year knows what it is to fear his or her job is at risk. In a way we’re the lucky ones – we have jobs – but to be a private-sector employee is to live with uncertainty, to constantly worry if skills are up to date, your employer is financially viable, good recommendations are available, your personal network is bigger than you and your spouse/partner, gray hairs don’t show and so on. Being in a job today, in short, is no guarantee of having a job tomorrow.

Norma Clarke, a very wise woman who was VP of HR at the Open Software Foundation, once told me no one had the right to deny another person the basic dignity of a job.

Of course the comment above is out of context – we were having a discussion about a staffing problem – but her comment stuck with me, even if I don’t completely agree. I’ve been a manager, an employee and self-employed. I’ve worked for crazy people, lazy people, brilliant people and clueless people. I’ve worked with superb writers, designers and craftspeople, idiots-savant who were brilliant at certain things, entrepreneurs who were terrifying in their single-mindedness and manipulators whose malicious and selfish impulses nearly destroyed the workplace. Most of the people I’ve worked with and for have been decent, hardworking, intelligent and reasonable. But all of us – employers and employees alike – have always been at the mercy of the markets, the government and the inexorable march of technology. There is no guarantee of a job. There never has been.

Economists (Schumpeter is credited with coining the term) like to call one of the forces most affecting the average employee ‘creative destruction’. As Holman Jenkins points out in the WSJ today, it’s a continual process. What he doesn’t get to is what each of us can do to guard against becoming its victim.

In my fairly limited experience the only way to protect oneself from creative destruction is to keep moving. Constantly learn, retrain and expand your skills at every opportunity. Push for on-the-job training; read widely, take classes and go to networking events. Live as though every day is your first day on the job, and possibly your last day. Be prepared.

Back to where I don’t completely agree with Norma: carry your dignity within. We are not all, it turns out, afforded the dignity of a job or continuous employment. So don’t count on work to make you a whole person. Live with dignity and curiosity, and the job will come.

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Technorati Tags: creativity, economy, jobs, Romney

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In this special edition episode of PRobecast, Topazers Justin Martell, Liz O’Donnell, and Caitlin Smith join me in talking about the only thing we could be talking about – election primary season!

We brought back Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann, plus recounted some famous debate gaffes. We voted who was responsible for most unforgettable primary moment.

Now it’s time for the PRobecast PR Power Ranking – which is when we go around the room and pick the story that we think ranks the highest PR-wise – meaning any aspects of PR could be the reasoning behind the pick. Was it the story itself, good data that was used, what’s getting the most pickup, was it a good PR move the company made, etc.

Generally we’d pick a company, or a product, etc, that fits the bill. This time, we voted on Rick Perry’s “oops” moment during one of the first debates, when he couldn’t remember that pesky third agency he’d get rid of. It was a moment of levity that none of us, least of all Mr. Perry, will forget!

Share your thoughts! Here are the questions we answered:

- What have been the highlights of the primaries for you?

- Who do you think will make the general election?

- What’s the worst thing a candidate has done thus far to push positive attention either onto him or herself, OR to push negative attention onto a fellow candidate?

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Jay-Z and Beyonce, one of the world’s most famous power couples, welcomed their first born child Blue Ivy Carter into the world this past Saturday. In the steps of her famous parent she did it while creating a buzz around her. A story from the New York Daily News is reporting that the couple paid $1.3 million to block off and redecorate part of the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. However, a problem occurred with this: the security team for Jay-Z and Beyonce blocked off the hospital’s Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit’s (NICU) nursery, which was not allowing parents to see their new born children.

The Lenox Hill Hospital’s spokesperson said that she did not hear any of these complaints and that they hold their patient satisfaction to the highest standards. Is this her way of completely dodging a question? Hospital staff reported anonymously that parents were being blocked from the nursery all night long, as if the stresses of bringing a complicated birth child into the world aren’t enough. One father of premature twins said, “This is the NICU. Nobody cares if you’re a celebrity. Nobody is star-gazing. They just want to see their children”. The story goes on to say that the man had to fight with security for twenty minutes just so he could see his newborn children. (This was after they kicked his family out of the sixth floor waiting room).

So what do you think? Did the hospital spokesperson handle this properly or was she just brushing it off? Is this just another story of how celebrities can throw money at a situation and get what they want? Does the father of the newborn twins have an argument and deserve an apology? Or is he looking for his fifteen minutes of fame?

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